DISPATCHES

BUSH SUPPORTS 'ENRON ESCAPE.'

Legislation moving through Congress would make it easier for
corporate wrongdoers to escape responsibility for defrauding
investors, harming the environment and otherwise maximizing profits
at the expense of the health and financial well-being of ordinary
citizens, says Nan Aron, president of Alliance For Justice
(allianceforjustice.org). The House passed the Class Action Fairness
Act (HR 1115) on a 253-170 vote July 12 and the Senate was expected
to take up its counterpart, S 274, in September. The House bill would
enable such notorious corporate wrongdoers as Enron's former chairman
Ken Lay and senior managers at WorldCom, ImClone and other
corporations who are defendants in class action lawsuits pending in
federal courts to automatically delay their cases for years. "We call
these provisions of the House bill the 'Enron Escape Clause'," Aron
said. "Unfortunately, President Bush supports all the provisions of
the House-passed bill and wants the Senate to take up that version
rather than its own." Even if the Senate passes its own version
(which is not retroactive), the president and such outspoken HR 1115
proponents as House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (whose congressional
district includes Houston, Enron's home town), could pressure
House-Senate conferees to ensure the retroactive Enron escape
provisions remain in the final bill. Moreover, both the House and
Senate versions of the bill would move virtually all state court
class actions into federal courts. If the House version prevails in
conference committee, the "Enron escape clause" could become
available to countless current and future wrongdoers nationwide.

GLOBAL JUSTICE MOVEMENTS. Immigrant workers and allies will
set out from eight major US cities, starting Sept 20 in Los Angeles
and cross the country in an Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride inspired
by the Freedom Riders of the civil rights movement. They will stop in
Washington, D.C., to meet with Congress members before travelling on
to New York City for an Oct. 4 rally. See www.iwfr.org. A March on
the Pentagon Oct 25 will include delegations from around the world
demonstrating that the World Unites Against US Militarism.
Demonstrations against Free Trade Area of the Americas will take
place in Miami Nov. 19-21 as trade ministers from 34 nations in the
Western Hemisphere continue negotiations on the FTAA. See
www.stopftaa.org. And a vigil and direct action will take place at
School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Ga., November 22-23. See
www.soawatch.org.

WAR COSTS RIVAL VIETNAM. The monthly bill for US military
missions in Iraq and Afghanistan now rivals Pentagon spending during
the Vietnam War. The Pentagon is spending nearly $5 billion per month
in Iraq and Afghanistan, a pace that would bring yearly costs to
almost $60 billion, Dave Moniz notes in USA Today. Sept. 8. That does
not include money spent on rebuilding Iraq's electric grid, water
supply and other infrastructure, costs which had no parallel in
Vietnam. In Vietnam, the US spent $111 billion during the eight years
of the war, from 1964 to 1972. Adjusted for inflation, that's more
than $494 billion, an average of $61.8 billion per year, or $5.15
billion per month.

BRITISH MP: 9/11 PRETEXT FOR US DOMINANCE. The mainstream
US media doesn't think it newsworthy, but Michael Meacher, former
environment minister in the cabinet of British Prime Minister Tony
Blair, believes the US used the 9/11 attacks as a pretext to pursue
global domination. He noted in the London Guardian Sept. 6 that the
blueprint for a global Pax Americana was drawn up in September 2000
by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American
Century (PNAC). It shows a push to take military control of the Gulf
region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. The plan "provides
a much better explanation of what actually happened before, during
and after 9/11 than the global war on terrorism thesis," Meacher
wrote.

That would explain why US authorities did little or nothing to
pre-empt the events of 9/11 after at least 11 countries provided
advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks, he wrote. Plans to hit
Washington targets with airplanes were known as early as 1996. In
1999 a US intelligence report noted that "al-Qaeda suicide bombers
could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the
Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA or the White House."

Meacher also noted that 15 of the 9/11 hijackers obtained their
visas in Saudi Arabia. Michael Springman, the former head of the
American visa bureau in Jeddah, has stated that since 1987 the CIA
had been illicitly issuing visas to unqualified applicants from the
Middle East and bringing them to the US for training in terrorism for
the Afghan war in collaboration with bin Laden. Newsweek on Sept. 15,
2001, also reported that five of the hijackers received training at
secure US military installations in the 1990s.

Leads prior to 9/11 were not followed up when French Moroccan
flight student Zacarias Moussaoui (now thought to be the 20th
hijacker) was arrested in August 2001 after a teacher reported he
showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer large
airliners. But when FBI agents learned from French intelligence that
Moussaoui had radical Islamist ties, a warrant to search his computer
was turned down by FBI headquarters.

Then on Sept. 11, not a single fighter plane from Andrews Air
Force Base was scrambled to investigate from 8:20 a.m., when the
first hijacking was suspected, until after the third hijacked plane
had hit the Pentagon at 9:38 a.m., despite standard FAA intercept
procedures that called for fighter intercepts once an aircraft had
moved significantly off its flight plan.

"Was this inaction simply the result of key people disregarding,
or being ignorant of, the evidence? Or could US air security
operations have been deliberately stood down on Sept. 11?" he asked,
noting that the former US prosecutor John Loftus has said: "The
information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11
was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or
FBI to assert a defense of incompetence."

"Nor is the US response after 9/11 any better," Meacher wrote.
"No serious attempt has ever been made to catch [Osama] Bin
Laden. In late September and early October 2001, leaders of
Pakistan's two Islamist parties negotiated Bin Laden's extradition to
Pakistan to stand trial for 9/11. However, a US official said,
significantly, that 'casting our objectives too narrowly' risked 'a
premature collapse of the international effort if by some lucky
chance Mr Bin Laden was captured.' The US chairman of the joint
chiefs of staff, General Myers, went so far as to say that 'the goal
has never been to get Bin Laden' (AP, April 5, 2002). The
whistleblowing FBI agent Robert Wright told ABC News (Dec. 19, 2002)
that FBI headquarters wanted no arrests. And in November 2001 the US
airforce complained it had had al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in its
sights as many as 10 times over the previous six weeks, but had been
unable to attack because they did not receive permission quickly
enough (Time magazine, May 13, 2002). None of this assembled
evidence, all of which comes from sources already in the public
domain, is compatible with the idea of a real, determined war on
terrorism." [The White House also has resisted a thorough,
independent study of the debacle and 9/11 survivors report
frustration in their dealings with the administration.

"The catalogue of evidence does, however, fall into place when
set against the PNAC blueprint," Meacher said. "From this it seems
that the so-called 'war on terrorism' is being used largely as bogus
cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives.
Indeed Tony Blair himself hinted at this when he said to the Commons
liaison committee: 'To be truthful about it, there was no way we
could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a
campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on Sept. 11' (London
Times, July 17, 2002). Similarly Rumsfeld was so determined to obtain
a rationale for an attack on Iraq that on 10 separate occasions he
asked the CIA to find evidence linking Iraq to 9/11; the CIA
repeatedly came back empty-handed (Time magazine, May 13, 2002).

The conclusion, Meacher wrote, "must surely be that the 'global
war on terrorism' has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to
pave the way for a wholly different agenda -- the US goal of world
hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil
supplies required to drive the whole project." Meacher was
environmental minister from May 1997 until June 2003, when he quit in
protest of the war in Iraq. He remains a Labour member of Parliament.
[See the essay at CommonDreams.org for Sept. 6.]

MENDACITY INDEX CITES DUBYA. This summer, after it became
clear that President George W. Bush had made false statements about
Iraq's nuclear weapons capacity and links to al Qaeda in his January
State of the Union address, some accused him of being the most
dishonest president in recent American history. Washington Monthly
set up a Mendacity Index to test such accusations. It recruited a
nominating committee of noted journalists and pundits who picked the
most serious fibs, deceptions, and untruths spoken by each of the
four most recent presidents. The top six untruths were picked for
each commander-in-chief, then the list went to a panel of judges with
longtime experience in Washington. The results in the September WM
were a little surprising, as Bill Clinton's fibs were judged least
mendacious, with a score of 3.1 out of 5 (lower scores being better).
George H.W. Bush was second with 3.2, followed by Ronald Reagan's 3.3
and Dubya's 3.6.

ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE. George W. Bush's televised speech
Sept. 7 reminded Tom Tomorrow (thismodernworld.com) of the guys who
come on subway cars and begin their spiel: "Excuse me ladies and
gentlemen, I'm sorry to disturb you, my name is George W. Bush and
I've had a run of bad luck, can you please find it in your hearts to
donate eighty seven billion dollars ... Oh, and Europe, old friend,
old pal? About that 'freedom fry' business? Just kidding!" On the
revisionist 9/11 movie produced by Bush apologists, Tomorrow noted
the oddity of casting Timothy Bottoms, who played Bush in Comedy
Central's That's My Bush, which was cancelled a month before 9/11.
But he noted another particularly inspired casting choice: Condi Rice
was played by the actress best known as the scheming wife of 24's
President Palmer; the character spent the second season of the show
conspiring with wealthy oilmen to start an unnecessary war in the
Middle East.

IF THIS IS A RECOVERY ... Year that the Bush administration
says the recession ended: 2001. Amount by which the number of people
in poverty grew last year, in millions: 1.4. Number of jobs that have
been lost since the "recovery" started, in millions: 1. Number of
manufacturing jobs lost in North and South Carolina since January
2001: 180,000. Last time the country experienced a "hiring slump"
this bad: 1939. Sources on file at the Institute for Southern Studies
(www.southernstudies.org).

GAO: NO MALPRACTICE INSURANCE CRISIS. A General Accounting
Office (GAO) study found that medical groups manufactured a crisis to
push their agenda of changing the medical malpractice insurance
system, Public Citizen said Sept. 4. The GAO study found that the
American Medical Association (AMA) and other medical provider groups
manufactured a "crisis" of access to care -- a crisis they claimed
was caused by malpractice lawsuits. The GAO debunked claims that
doctors in AMA-designated "crisis states" were no longer providing
medical care to patients. Instead, the GAO found that the volume of
medical care delivered to patients in five states had increased when
the AMA suggested it was decreasing. Congressional lawmakers are
considering a measure to cap non-economic damages provided to victims
of medical malpractice at $250,000. "The GAO report confirmed what
Public Citizen has found in its numerous state studies -- that
liability laws have a positive effect on doctors' behavior, not the
negative effects so often alleged," said Joan Claybrook, Public
Citizen president. "The GAO study also shows that Bush administration
lies are not limited to foreign policy." (See Pulbic Citizen's
malpractice site at www.medicalmalpracticefacts.org.)

UTILITIES GAVE MILLIONS TO PROBERS. Members of the House
committee investigating August's massive Northeast electricity
failure have raised more than $7 million from electric utilities over
the past 15 years, the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics
(opensecrets.org.) reported. The 57 members of the powerful House
Energy and Commerce Committee, which opened hearings Sept. 3 looking
into the causes of the worst blackout in US history, have raised $7.2
million from the industry in their campaign accounts and leadership
PACs since 1989. The committee members collected $2.3 million in the
2002 election cycle alone and have taken in more than $675,000 so far
in the current cycle. Committee Chairman W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.)
has raised more than $377,000 from the electric utilities since 1989,
all but about $10,000 from industry PACs. But the committee's top
recipient of money from the industry is Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.),
the committee's top-ranking Democrat, who has raised nearly $649,000.
(See www.capitaleye.org.)

MIND THE GAP. What was once a gap is now a chasm, the
Economic Policy Institute found in its study of the enormous
difference in wealth between this nation's richest and poorest. Based
on data from the Congressional Budget Office, EPI found that from
1979 to 2000 the after-tax real income of the top 1% of households
tripled while the poorest 20% of households saw an increase of only
15.1%.

YOUNG EYES GA. SENATE RACE. Andrew Young, the former
Atlanta mayor and UN ambassador, is leaning strongly toward running
for the seat of retiring Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.), the Washington
Post reported. Young, 71, a veteran civil rights leader and former US
House member, has "all but decided to make the race" the Post
reported, citing a Democratic campaign source. Republicans captured
Georgia's other Senate seat last year and were favored to pick up
Miller's seat. African Americans have had few successes in Senate
races, but Young is widely known and respected in Georgia, with a
résumé that resonates in black and white communities
alike.